A homosexual brothels featuring children supposedly engaged as “telegraph messenger boys” actually being sent door to door to the highest echelon of British society is scandalous indeed. Equally scandalous is the fact that this story was completely unknown to the general public until March of 1975. Prince Albert (who some belief may have been aided by the court surgeon in enacting the Jack the Ripper murders) was very closely intimated in the conspiracy of mass theft of innocence in Decadent fin de siecle England.
The New York Times recently ran a full-page spread commemorating Irish playwright, poet, Decadent and Dandy Oscar Wilde. Wilde was, in their opinion, an icon and martyr for gay rights. Best known for his The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde is as well known for his flamboyant lifestyle and razor-sharp, sardonic wit as he is for his famous banishment from England after a scandal that involved Wilde "buggering" a young member of the Upper Class, Lord Alfred Douglas, son of the Marquess of Queensbury. Queensberry, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/jun/04/biography">according to Douglas Murray's <i>Bosie: A biography of Lord Alfred Douglas<i> relates that at one point the Marquess, enraged expressed that his son ought to have "the shit kicked out of him."</a>
Like the prototypical Dandy himself, Beau Brummell, Wilde was not born of the manor per se, however, he rose quickly to success in the most popular and elite social circles as his star rose over London's West End playhouses. As quickly as his star rose, it fell due to fallout from the aforementioned scandal.
Now Douglas, unlike the poor Irish poet, was Lorded gentry, which makes the turnabout all the more interesting considering the Judge's pronouncement. Wilde's first trial was a defamation case brought against Queensbury. Wilde was faced with the accusation from Queensbury of "posing as a sodomite." It was this trial that brought up the letters between Wilde and Bosie (Queensbury's son) that had Wilde convicted.
The third and final trial of Oscar Wilde saw him tried for acts of "gross indecency" of the type he was accusing the Marquess of Queensbury and enacted upon Queensbury's son. Over 120 cases of gross indecency of this type had been tried at the Old Bailey and Wilde's was extraordinarily unusual as far as severity. Was Wilde being especially punished for his role in absconding client lists from Cleveland Street? Had Wilde crossed some invisible line, not through his outrageous behavior, but through threatening to uncover the salacious and outrageous behavior of others, including those in the court?
According to records from the Old Bailey Courthouse, Wilde was being extorted. Surely, many Lords were as well. <a href="https://timalderman.com/2016/01/27/gay-history-the-cleveland-street-scandal/">The Cleveland Street Scandal</a> was the Franklin Cover-Up of its day and would not have broke in the first place had not a frightened messenger boy admitted the sex work cover operations when discovered with an inordinate amount of change in his pocket. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/4811529/Inside-story-19-Cleveland-Street.html">4 schillings at the time would have been several weeks earnings and the police were investigating "a theft" at the time</a>, so thanks to self-preservation the brothel was finally closed. Wilde was not being exported by a rent-boy however. Wilde was in fact "protecting himself" vis a vis certain "stolen items." Is it possible certain "stolen items" could have (as they finally did in the 70's) implicate persons such as the "Honorable" Hamilton Cuffe, who would prosecute Wilde in 1895 as Director of Public Protections
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Oscar Wilde in early Cleveland Street/ 'bunberrying in Whitechapel'/Tite Street/Vigo Street/'Kellys Library' days. <a href="http://t.co/oQq393JQvU">pic.twitter.com/oQq393JQvU</a></p>— Felicity Lowde (@flutterbyfjl) <a href="https://twitter.com/flutterbyfjl/status/603622387876274176">May 27, 2015</a></blockquote>
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In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde seems to allude to the actions of the Ripper murderer and the Cleveland Street Scandal. As far as Cleveland Street goes, perhaps these half-veiled intimations were what led to the notoriously awful reception. One reviewer slyly admitted the book was suitable for “none but outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph boys.” Despite the cover-up, the Cleveland Street Scandal had, thanks to "journalistic innovations of the day" forever cemented in its contemporary readers the vision of certain Lords having their perverted way with poor boys. In fact, Wilde's sodomy trial would <i>have</i> to focus on "the rent boys" considering Victorian England would not allow such impropriety as a Lord and a low-borne to become the talk of the town. According to a Guardian book review of The Trials of Oscar Wilde, the reviewer admits that "the prosecution only made progress when it introduced the rent boys' evidence." The same rent boys who, it would be found out 8 decades later were involved in the sex scandal that should have rocked several of the Lords as well as a handful of Royals?
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Importance… <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/bbc2?src=hash">#bbc2</a> Oscar Wilde certainly knew all about Bunburying. This is noted from adjacent to Cleveland Street, coincidentally.</p>— John F Axon (@55fenderstrat) <a href="https://twitter.com/55fenderstrat/status/769775634457497600">August 28, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<h4>"Bunburying" is a term from <i>The Importance of Being Earnest</i> referring to using an assumed name while leading a double life.</h4>
<a href="http://www.qxmagazine.com/2011/05/nightmare-on-cleveland-street/">QX magazine writes</a> of the Cleveland Street Scandal"
<blockquote>A watch was placed on 19, Cleveland Street, and, sure enough, “a number of men of superior bearing and apparently of good position” were recorded knocking in vain at the door. Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline, who had failed the previous year to catch Jack the Ripper, reported that the visitors included at least two MPs and Lord Arthur Somerset, Assistant Equerry to the Prince of Wales. There was enough evidence to make further arrests. But nothing happened. Why? This is where the story gets really juicy.
Somerset’s solicitor, Arthur Newton, “quietly let it be known,” says McKenna, “that any prosecution of Lord Arthur would mean that the name of a very important person would be dragged into the scandal.” The Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions named this VIP as none other than Prince Albert Victor, eldest son of the Prince of Wales, grandson of Queen Victoria. Was Newton bluffing in order to keep his client out of court? “If Eddie [the Prince’s family name] was involved nobody will ever know,” Chandler admits. “If he went to Cleveland Street, he went there in disguise.” Significantly, however, Somerset never said in so many words that Eddie wasn’t one of Hammond’s clients.</blockquote>
Arthur Newton was also a client of the Cleveland Street brothel as well as defending Wilde in court against sodomy charges. <a href=" http://www.clevelandstreetscandal.com">Newton would show up in court again</a>:
<blockquote>One more trial was to arise as a result of the Cleveland Street scandal in respect of the activities of Arthur Newton, defense solicitor to the aforementioned Arthur Somerset who, it was believed, had helped Somerset evade justice. Newton was brought before the court on the 12th December 1889 and charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice for allegedly interfering with witnesses and arranging their disappearance to France.
He was convicted but received the relatively mild punishment of six weeks in prison. He was even allowed to resume his legal practice, representing the author and playwright Oscar Wilde in own trial for gross indecency with other men five years later in 1895.</blockquote>
As you see, even in the courtroom, Wilde was literally surrounded by boy-buggering blue blood and despite this, his trial resulted in far harsher punishment than any to date. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=_uIOBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=arthur+newton+oscar+wild3e&source=bl&ots=GbJ9AOjRRm&sig=7jvaK18Xi4eLy4ZlJAEp9G_Ojjg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_m43ev6jWAhVDNiYKHYlCA1wQ6AEILjAB#v=onepage&q=arthur%20newton%20oscar%20wild3e&f=false">According to the book <i>Oscar Wilde's Scandalous Summer: The 1894 Worthing Holiday and the Aftermath</i></a>, Charles Gill, Charles Willie Matthews, H.H. Asquith and Frank Lockwood were also ties between the Cleveland Street Scandal and the Oscar Wilde trial.
If those "stolen items" were indeed documents related to the Cleveland Street Scandal, this could have been, along with clues left in his final works the real reason for the severity of his punishment. His last two plays were still playing in the West End when he saw his final court date. The Importance of Being Earnest about two men leading double lives and Lady Windermere's Fan features the main character "sacrificing their reputation." If Wilde <i>is</i> a martyr, could it be as one of the first researcher casualties of the Pedophacracy?
To be continued…
